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New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

zdnet.com

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Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#41

Post by NalNezumi »

acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

>Governments should develop and run opensource systems. I'm for this proposal too, but for different reason.

opensource system can create much needed transparency in government project and organization effort. In my home country the unemployment agency spent atrocious amount of money to create an unusable job-posting app; something private companies do for fraction of the cost. More surprisingly, they doubled down on it; instead of scrapping it when it wasn't delivering. My guess it that some nepotism/favoritism was at play, and if the project was at least open source it could've been examined by others.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#42

Post by em-bee »

luckylion wrote: post #35
acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

That would also put the risk on the government though. What if their software is shit? Tax money wasted. Buying software has the benefit that the manufacturer carries the risk. Imho, they should set standards, APIs, file formats etc to enable competition and keep vendor lock-in to a minimum.

which risk? a software company is going to make sure that their risk is covered financially. so if the software turns out to be useless, they will sure find a way to shift the blame and get paid anyways.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#43

Post by TulliusCicero »

OrangeTux wrote: post #13

There is another interesting section in the document[1]. The city introduces the "Munich Open Source Sabatical". The city will pay professional programmers for 3 till 6 months to work on open source projects that benefit the community. > Die Stadt München unterstützt die Entwicklung von Open Source-Projekten mit einem "Munich Open Source Sabbatical". Professionelle Programmierer*innen, die sich für drei oder sechs Mo…

Interesting. How much will they pay them, though?

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#44

Post by skinkestek »

acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

> Governments should develop and run opensource...

Happy to say that I am working on such a project. Heavy (and unnecessary NDA) so I cannot say in cleartext but it is in use in one Nordic country already, it is opensource and already I hear that the Dutch found it to be a good starting point and probably will be using it too.

Some more details, the company I work for is owned by one country but doesn't compete as much as cooperate - I am a consultant from another company. And we both use open source software and libraries and publish as open source most of what we create.

I hate it that I can't talk about it.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#45

Post by toshk »

mikekchar wrote: post #24
acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

While I completely agree with you, there is a compelling argument for governments spending tax payer money on goods from local companies rather than competing with them. Of course, I don't think I would class MS as a "local company" for Munich ;-). I'm just saying that there are lots of reasonable points of view on this topic.

I'm working on some projects for the city of Amsterdam, by default all we develop is open source.

But whether this is a legal issue is actually an open debate, in some specific cases companies could potentially sue Amsterdam for sharing solutions with other governments and thereby "competing" with the market. How a judge would rule is not clear. But this is something they are aware of and it's a risk. It seems to also be connected to the way the project is shared.

As far as I know they are looking into changing the law on the national level so this stops being a problem. Also strangely enough, I've been told, as soon as the project gets funded by the EU, this law is not applicable anymore.

Open source means published on github, not many projects are actually properly documented.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#47

Post by seemslegit »

loudmax wrote: post #32
seemslegit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy, just create a software ecosystem that is superior to or at least on-par with the commercial offerings (being open source is not by itself valuable for the users), then grow a generation of non-technical users into that ecosystem

> on-par with the commercial offerings That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural. And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system.

> That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural.

Why ? An ecosystem consists of multiple offerings and there are also multiple commercial ecosystems.

> And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system.

Being able to finance something is an inherent part of its feasibility.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#48

Post by boomboomsubban »

user5994461 wrote: post #25
boomboomsubban wrote: post #12

I can't imagine any US party echoing the FSF's statement, even if just in a statement of political intent. It's impressive that the movement has enough public interest to make platitudes worthwhile in Germany.

Why would the US government try to avoid Microsoft? It's a well-known local company. And the government can get a good chunk of the license costs back throughout company and employment taxes.

In the eyes of the FSF and people with similar ideals, the benefits gained by spending that money on free software dwarfs the tax revenue gained. The German people seem to have enough support for free software to at least make the government notice, which does not seem true in the US.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#50

Post by kleiba »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #46

Wasn't so long since their last U-turn, switching from Linux to Windows 10 around 2018. https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-champion-munich-will-swi... , https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open-source-e...

Yes, as discussed in the article.
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